This week saw a few big wins for the FBI when the agency announced Operation Endgame, a multinational coordinated cyber operation to dismantle a criminal infrastructure. The effort took down more than 100 servers that were dropping ransomware and other malware “to collect and steal personal and financial login information.”
Additional arrests were made in what the FBI said was, “likely the world’s largest botnet ever.” As Krebs on Security reported, “The arrest coincided with the seizure of the 911 S5 website and supporting infrastructure, which the government says turned computers running various “free VPN” products into Internet traffic relays that facilitated billions of dollars in online fraud and cybercrime.” Also, the 911 S5 botnet is, “allegedly linked to billions of dollars in fraud, child exploitation, and bomb threats, among other crimes.” These types of disruptions to cybercrime infrastructure not only protect digital assets on a global scale but also reinforce the success that happens when international law enforcement agencies work together.
A drone photographer is facing charges from the US Justice Department in a first-of-its-kind espionage case, which raises questions about First Amendment rights in the era of aerial accessibility. According to Wired, a Chinese national is alleged to have used a drone to take pictures of, “a Virginia shipyard where the US Navy was assembling nuclear submarines.”
To learn more about the FBI's efforts to fight cybercrime, visit our Library. Now let’s take a look at what else made industry headlines this week.
May. 31: OpenAI stated they cut off five covert influence operations that tried to abuse its AI tools to manipulate public disclosure and political outcomes.
May. 30: A report stated, Best Buy/Greek Squad, Amazon, and PayPal were the topmost companies impersonated by scammers in 2023.
May. 30: Cybernews reported, “A malicious surveillance framework dubbed LightSpy has been expanded to target macOS systems.”
May. 29: Ticketmaster had its IT breached by attackers who allegedly stole 1.3TB of data of at least 650 million of their customers.
May. 29: A non-profit research library, The Internet Archive, is experiencing distributed denial-of-service attacks.
May. 28: Over 90 malicious apps have been downloaded more than 5.5 million times from the Google Play store.
May. 28: Data stolen from MediSecure is allegedly for sale on the dark web for $50,000.
May. 27: A prescription management company, Sav-Rx, warns of data breach in 2023, impacting more than 2.8 million in the US.